1. Field of Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for throttling and distributing data transmissions across a network.
2. Description of Related Art
Presently, terminals, such as service switching points, send requests to servers, such as Service Control Points. These requests represent message exchanges between the involved terminals and servers. A request begins with an initial query message being sent by the terminal to the server. After processing the initial query message, the server may send a response message back to the terminal. Depending on the circumstances, the terminal may then send a subsequent query(s) to the server requesting further processing which may in turn result in subsequent responses being sent back. The request ends when the last pair of request/optional response is processed.
Occasionally, a server may become overloaded when terminals send requests faster than the server can process the requests. As a result, the overload may cause considerable delay in servicing any subsequent requests. This problem can occur more frequently when the terminals have higher processing capabilities than the servers. The problem is also common when terminals send requests in a system having a set of heterogeneous servers (i.e., servers with different processing capabilities from each other).